It is quite telling that on Monday the Tories opted to a) announce the membership of their new Euro grouping and b) announce the resignation of Ian Clements. Burying bad news? I should coco! At least James Cleverly has the decency to admit it, however obliquely.

There isn’t much more I can say about the Euro grouping that hasn’t already been said elsewhere. Suffice to say, the fact that they could only muster two other parties with more than one MEP to join is all too telling.

I know the Tories like to bang on about how the other European Parties have their fair share of oddballs (I’ve never had the names of the guilty ALDES parties mentioned but no doubt someone can point me to them), but this is a grouping of ALL oddballs. Forming a grouping like this is to make a statement and the statement I hear from this is that the Tories do not consider environmental issues or gay rights anything close to a priority.

The Ian Clements incident is gobsmacking. Boris hasn’t been any better than Ken in terms of appointing his own cronies. The difference is, Ken’s ones tended to be more honest – or somewhat smarter at least.

Meanwhile, the Tory reaction to Bercow’s election is one of the least gracious spectacles I’ve seen in a long time. This, let us not forget, is from people who were complaining at how Michael Martin had politicised the role.

The objection to John Bercow from the Tories is not that he is a swivel-eyed racist, but that he isn’t one any more. An odd statement to broadcast to the nation. Dan Finkelstein rightly gives his team a good ticking off. Praise is also due to Douglas Carswell who was one of the first voices of calm this morning. Not only that, but he admitted to voting for Bercow himself (thereby scotching Nadine Dorries’ theory that only two other Tories voted for JB), and voted for my own first choice Richard Shepherd (you see, I love Tories really).

As for the result itself, personally I would have been happy with either Bercow or Young. I’m delighted the speculation surrounding Margaret Beckett’s shoo-in proved to be utter nonsense. I suspect that the hostility shown towards Bercow has been whipped up by a bunch of headbangers in the party and will dissipate fairly quickly. It is certainly the case that nothing like all of the Labour Party voted for Bercow – given that it seems most Lib Dems did a sizeable chunk of Labour MPs must have shored up Young’s vote.

I do wonder however if the electoral system they have used is the best one for letting a “consensus” candidate emerge. The downside of an exhaustive ballot/AV procedure is that it doesn’t always help build consensus. In this case, with one candidate clearly despised by a minority (how large that minority is remains an unknown quantity), it just looks like majoritarianism.

How different would it have been if they had used Modified Borda Count, where lower preferences would have been counted, or Majority Judgement? With both these systems, being despised by the minority would have counted against Bercow (this assumes that most Bercow voters would have minded Young winning less than the other way around). Enough to affect the outcome? I couldn’t say, but it certainly would have narrowed it.

The bottom line is that while we have a system which tends to ensure that a single party has a majority in the Commons, it is that majority that will get to pick the speaker. The convention of picking an opposition party speaker went out of the window in 2000. A system that at least softens the harder effects of that brute fact is at least worth considering.

Why? Because after the last debacle, in which Martin rose to power, the Commons decided to move into the 20th century (the 21st being too much of a leap) and adopt an exhaustive ballot system. That means that unless a candidate gets elected in the first round with 50% of the vote, there will be a series of ballots until one does.

It’s a bit like the Alternative Vote system except, this being the House of Commons, they have to turn it into the procedural equivalent of the Hokey Cokey and do it by physically walking in and out of the division lobby instead of simply writing their preferences down on a simple ballot paper.

So at the same time as dismissing electoral reform for the rest of us, the Commons is not above a bit of electoral reform itself. I might not like AV for electing Parliament, but for electing a single post like this it is a no-brainer.

What all this means is that the speculation in pieces like this one in the Times is frankly bogus. Even if the Labour vote does split enough to put Sir George Young in first place in the first round, the Labour bloc is likely to have its own way in the longer run.

Personally speaking, I am a bit torn. I’ve always liked and respected Richard Shepherd’s quiet crusade for parliamentary reform and I can see the attractions of John Bercow. Alan Beith would be perfectly respectable. Sir George Young, in parliamentary terms, is a radical reformer. But he is also too much of an insider for my liking and I haven’t liked his stance on the expenses issue. Beckett, in my view, would be an utter disaster – no coincidence then that the Labour whips are hard at work to get her installed.

If Labour continues to be dominated by a bunch of self-serving venal toadies who have learned nothing over the past couple of months then Beckett is a shoe-in. Is it cynical of me therefore to be tempted to put a fiver on her?